Cache? What Cache?

Think back to the classic film Thelma and Louise. Now drop the
temperature 45 degrees C and increase the amount of clothing to a snug 6
layers. Replace Thelma with Danny and Louise with Tim and let them drive
off into the sunset (sundip... it's 24hr daylight here at the moment) on
their skidoos, GPS in hand and hot flask under the seat. Romantic eh?

Their mission - to check out the route to the cache that was left last
year and to find a new campsite ready for the move this week. After a
geology day, they disappeared off in the evening light, perfect for
spotting crevasse shadows and for romance... ahem.

The route planned using our high resolution satellite pictures turned
out to be great - sneaking between crevasse fields on solid snow,
getting to the cache site after around 90 minutes. The cache was put in
last year by the airplanes and consists of 30+ drums of aircraft fuel
and a bunch of our kit including the floor for our cook tent, skidoo
fuel and enough cookies to last 6 people 6 weeks.

We plugged in the coordinates on our GPS units and drove to the site to
find the flags left last year marking the cache. What did we find?
Nothing.
Zilch.
Nada.
Rien.
Diddly Squat.

We rang camp and checked the coordinates and then carried out a grid
search on skidoos to find the elusive flags.
Nothing.

Oops. Now all we can do is check with the pilot from last season that
the coordinates are right and then send Chris out to use his big
canadian probe to see if he can find the right spot. If not we will
have to move to plan B. And we will have to come up with a plan B too.

Oh well, nothing there that's essential for us so not a problem at the
moment. And the route was good. And we have found what is probably one
of the most spectacular campsites in the world. Now we just have to
wait for the great storm of 2011 that's forecast for tuesday to do it's
thing and we can move on...